A Before Q
by schweinsty
Summary: It took six years for Q to get the name, but only two weeks for him to get what came with it.


A Before Q

The day before his eighteenth birthday, Alexander spends his morning in class (one thermos of coffee, with a refill in Professor Williams' office, one doughnut with chocolate icing and sprinkles from Professor Farooqi with an admonition to eat something 'before the wind knocks you over').

He spends his afternoon ensconced in a booth at his favorite coffee shop (one scone, four cups of tea, and a tomato mozzarella sandwich), finishing up one of his term projects, with six weeks to spare.

He stops in the alley behind the cafe before he leaves. Mark the barista is fit and handsome and under the impression that Alex is nineteen.

Alex doesn't bother to disabuse him of the notion.

Fifteen minutes later (because Mark's just on his break, though he finds it so amusing that Alex can usually go twice - or, on one memorable occasion, thrice - before he has to go back in), Alex retrieves his messenger bag and thermos from the employee break room, because not even for a blowjob would he let his precious leather bag get dirty, and heads home.

He spends the evening hacking into the Bulgarian secret service - because everyone needs a hobby - and reading Voltaire, because his brother got him a set of finely bound 'Complete Works of...' two Christmases ago, and Alex feels vaguely guilty he hasn't read them all yet.

He's so busy coding he doesn't even notice when midnight rolls by, just peers at the clock sometime later, pushes his glasses up on his nose and notices that it's a quarter past two.

He remembers to eat some crackers and cheese before going to bed at three, which is good because now he can tell Professor Nguyn that he's really quite capable of feeding himself, thank you, without feeling particularly guilty.

He's out the door by eight the next morning. Earlier than usual, but it's his birthday, and if he wants to make a quick stop by Mark's apartment to celebrate that's nobody's business.

Alex is three minutes from the station when two men in black suits walk up on either side and quickly manhandle him into a black Lincoln parked by the curb.

The good thing is they're not Bulgarian, or Russian, or Chinese - the last of which is a particular relief, considering some of his more recent activities. The bad news is they're English.

"Good morning, Mr. Christopoulos," says the woman in the coat with the peppermint hair, and Alex is trying to decide whether it would be better to beg for mercy or deny everything when the man at her side hands him a file folder. "Last night, two agents from China's Ministry of State Security landed in Heathrow Airport with orders to find you and kill you. One of our agents stopped them. You have two options: One, you can go home and forget this conversation ever happened. You can keep on hacking into any database you feel like, or you can try to run; they'll hunt you down either way. You'll be tortured before you're executed, and they might take out your family as well."

Alex swallows and wipes his hands on his corduroy pants and tries not to think of how the younger man sitting next to the woman looks almost _bored_, as if hearing this sort of thing is all in a day's work.

"Or?"

The man – her assistant – hands her another folder and a pen. The cover page on the papers inside says 'Contract of Employment and Waiver for Classified Documents'.

"Or," says the woman, "You can come and work for us."

* * *

His title of 'independent contractor', M tells him, is merely a formality, because quite a few people might well have fits if they ever found out MI-6 had employed a virtual child - prodigy notwithstanding - to consult on their security systems. Three years from now they'll revisit the issue, she says, and as long as Alex has proved satisfactory, he'll join something called Q branch. Until then, all he has to do is consult on the occasional project and finish his degree (and however many more degrees he wants).

Part of proving satisfactory includes not hacking into other countries' private files (unless M asks him to), a point which M rather belabors. Alex returns home to find all his equipment replaced by shiny new computers which will do quite well for his purposes but contain no classified information.

It's all quite low-key, and he doesn't set foot near MI-6; he finds his assignments waiting at his desk when he gets home from class in the form of encrypted USB drives (and quickly, though never quite completely, learns to ignore the feelings of paranoia and vulnerability), and he submits his work directly to someone known as 'Q' via the same method. The work is interesting enough, if a little routine, and in the meantime Alex has his degrees – because he means to complete his PhD before he's well and wholly drafted into MI-6 – and occasionally enlivens his social schedule by dating a bohemian type. Alex quite likes artists, of all stripes: they're hedonistic, work-obsessed, and generally self-absorbed enough they never ask what _he's _working on.

Sometimes, in between jobs, he visits his eldest sister and brother-in-law – the ones who raised him – up north for a weekend or two. He fits better there now, he thinks, that he has a claim on him elsewhere. It's easier to enjoy your family when you're not beholden to them.

One time he stays for a fortnight. He's earned the vacation: spent over a week with close to no sleep tracing a hacker who stole the PM's private schedule and security details. His work's very likely kept the man from being murdered in his bed and helped capture most of a terrorist organization. He's just shy of twenty, then, and forgets to eat enough that a week like that makes his clothes go baggy.

"I was never bitter, you know," his sister tells him out of the blue one evening. She is quite busy chopping asparagus to cook and Alex is quite busy having tea with her eldest – a little sprite called Gracie who wears princess dresses with football cleats – so he can pretend he doesn't understand what his sister is talking about and avoid the subject altogether.

"That's nice," he says, and adjusts the blue feathered boa looped around his neck. "No, no, you don't _cut_ the bread, you _break_it with your – like this, see? Yes, that's—"

"About having to take you in when Mum took ill. I never minded." Sarah, likewise, ignores Alex's glare and subsequent pointed looks at Gracie and swipes the asparagus into a pot with bubbling water. "Mark didn't either. In fact we liked having you around. It was difficult, of course, but that's family for you."

"Yes," Alex says eventually, when it's obvious that Sarah doesn't expect a response, because maybe she doesn't bloody well mind, but she bloody well should. People are messy and complicated and it mustn't have been easy dealing with a boy wonder to begin with, and – and it's not Mum's fault, and it's not Sarah's fault and it's not _his_fault, not really, but it's all just so unfair. But they've been over that before, and she never wants to hear it. "All right."

He watches his sister – who studiously avoids looking at him – until Gracie stomps on his foot so hard he can feel the cleats through his combat boot and reminds him – with an imperious wave of her boa – that it's his turn to serve.

* * *

Alex receives his PhD the Saturday after his twenty-first birthday. Sunday, he comes home from the market to find a tall, square, impeccably dressed man sitting at his kitchen table.

"Congratulations," the man says. He Alex set his groceries on the counter – nearly knocking over his baguette – and slides a folder across the table before he continues. "You're to report to Q branch, at this address, tomorrow morning."

Alex pushes his glasses up on his nose and takes the folder but doesn't open it, and the agent's lips curl up minutely in something that isn't quite a sneer, but is close enough.

"If you would like to continue your employment, of course."

For just one moment Alex almost refuses. He could wipe out an entire bank if he wanted to, take the money and hide well enough that no one could ever find him-

-but as soon as the idea pops into it head it's stomped on by two completely disparate thoughts: namely, _I'd never see Sarah and the kids again_ and, rather unexpectedly, _But who would keep the servers safe, then?_

And Alex doesn't doubt any of his boyfriends would mock him to death, but somehow in between writing code and hacking terrorist's computers, he's gone and developed a bloody sense of patriotism.

"I'll be there," he tells the agent, who nods respectfully and leaves.

He's there twenty minutes early, the next morning.

* * *

All his life, Alex has been accustomed to being the smartest person in any room he walks into. It's a little tiring, honestly, constantly having to slow down so he doesn't leave everyone else in the dust.

MI-6 is little different.

Q herself is all right. She's in her mid-fifties, a tall redhead who breaks regulation and keeps a photo of her daughters in her wallet. She takes to Alex immediately, gives him projects he finds difficult and straightens his tie when he falls asleep in the labs and often brings him a bagel when he looks thinner than usual (which, considering how much time he spends in the labs and how little time he spends eating, is quite often indeed).

"You're such a dear boy," she tells him one day when she finds him sipping tea at his work station complacently at four in the morning. "But you need to remember to take better care of yourself. Genius is no good if you're tired out _before _a crisis comes."

Alex doesn't tell her that he's far from the only one who overworks and under eats, that it wouldn't be him on the spot in a crisis, and that it's more than a bit hypocritical to call him out when she was at the labs at four in the morning to begin with. He just promises to take care in the future and joins her for a latte.

* * *

The rest of the department isn't all bad. They're not _stupid_, at least, they're just not – they just can't – they don't see the forest for the trees, sometimes.

Two weeks in, Alex has learned to anticipate Q's decisions. 004 wants a new gun that can record conversations and shoot lasers out of its handle? Upgrade his Beretta so it's lighter but doesn't lose any power. S wants you to hack a system in an Alaskan cabin that's not connected to the internet? Tell him it's too impossible (and, if necessary, tell him it's too expensive) and give him a drive that'll hack it once you get an agent in the cabin. Agents and their handlers don't want to know why you can't do something, or why it costs more pounds to keep their servers safe than to train new agents; they want miracles, and Q Branch is there to compromise and give them solutions to their problems. It's not often glamorous or exciting, but it's a challenge to find ways to do things that won't break the bank or get your agents captured. Alex is rarely more satisfied than when he's spent thirty hours programming a nasty little virus that will wipe out a Swiss bank's servers and making it look like an employee downloaded it from a porn website, or writing a program that will double the speed at which they can trace a call from a mobile.

The rest of Q Branch would rather be designing exploding tennis shoes (as if Double Os even wore those) or wasting their time trying to invent an invisible car.

Still, they have their good points. They're friendly enough, inviting Alex to eat with them in the cafeteria whenever a group goes grab a bite, and Q Branch skews young, when it comes to its employees, albeit not quite so young that Alex's colleagues aren't bemused at his arrival.

Alex has only been working at MI-6 four months before he does something even brighter than usual, and manages to decrypt a USB drive full of information 004 stole from the Chinese embassy last week.  
"Hurst," he tells his supervisor – an ex-marine who could snap him in half with her hands tied behind her back, and whose name is not actually Hurst – after he double-checks his work. "I think I've got something."

"Well now," Hurst says when she comes up behind him and takes a look. "Well done. Well done, indeed."

Hurst's praise – as rare as it is sought after – has Price poking his head over the cubicle wall, and before Alex knows it he's invited to the pub for an after-hours celebration.

Alex appreciates the invitation. They let him buy the drinks, include him in their talk, and don't even joke about him being old enough to drink, which he appreciates even more. Q sends him an e-mail commending him, and when he goes in to work the next morning there's a new mug (Scrabble-themed) sitting on his desk.

For the first time since He first walked into Q Branch, he realizes he likes it there.

* * *

Two months after Alex turns twenty-two, his mother sends an e-mail inviting him to visit her in Wales for Christmas. It's stilted and a little awkward, but the whole family's there and she's on her medication, so all Alex has to do is spend twenty minutes talking about his new job at an IT firm. He spends the rest of his time amusing his eldest nieces and nephews, who have recently discovered Nerf guns.

When he makes it back to London, Q has been dead of a heart attack for two weeks and the new Q - the engineer formerly known as Perry - is sitting in Q's office and giving out orders like he's been doing it for years.

Alex leaves flowers at her grave and makes sure both her daughters will receive full scholarships to the universities of their choice. If Q or M notice, no one says a thing.

* * *

"Brenda," Q says one day (and Alex never even tried to look at Q's personal file, so the name comes as something of a surprise), "Was grooming you to take over her position when she retired in fifteen years."

Alex stands straight in front of Q's desk with his hands clenched at his side, and he's not exactly surprised at the information, for all it's as new to him as his friend's real name. They'd thought alike, and seen beyond what the department _wanted_ to what it _needed_. Of course she would have wanted someone who wouldn't leave their secrets vulnerable.

"Yes, sir," he says.

Q – rougher and gruffer and hardly Q at all – looks him over with a satisfied nod. "I can't say I agreed, bringing you on here when you're just a lad yourself, but you've done good, solid work since then, so I'm making you my second-in-command."

Which is a position that doesn't actually exist, in Q branch. It's probably just a very nice way of putting him in charge of the computer geeks so Q can have at it in the labs and make all sorts of flashy gadgets.

Q – the old Q – never would have done that, for all that she preferred working with her hands as much as Perry does.

Well, Alex can't have anything to do with the gadgets – not yet, anyway – but he can run the geeks so it would make her proud.

"Yes, sir," he says, and unclenches his fists. He's already making plans when he walks out of Q's office. Q's probably going to divert as much funding as he can into gadgets, leaving the bones of security and monitoring as bare as possible to make room for exploding pens and dart pipes, but no matter. Alex is going to build the best firewalls and train the best hackers the world has ever seen, with or without Q's help.

He pops his head into the second cubicle to his right on his way back to his own space.

"Price," he says. "Get Ridley and Hurst to meet me at Mimi's for tea. We're going to have some work to do."

* * *

Three years later, Alex has his own office and spends roughly eighty-five hours a week curled up in it with no company but a cup and saucer, a tin of tea leaves, and an electric kettle his sister bought him for his birthday. He and Q have settled into a careful dance of professional respect and personal dislike; Alex heads the geeks and helps out in the labs when needed, and Q pops his head in often enough that anyone above M won't get suspicious.

M, Alex knows, they neither of them even tried to bother fooling.

"Alex," Q says over the intercom one particularly grim morning in February - and Alex doesn't bother complaining that Q doesn't call him by his surname like everyone else because he's tried it before and it's useless, "I want you to run some tests on the firearms we were working on last week. Check the eye scope for me, will you? They're expecting you in the labs."

Alex, who had not bothered going home the night before while completing his report (six mugs of oolong and a bagel with cream cheese), spends two hours calibrating weapons in the basement with two irritated lab techs who don't want to let him keep his tea.

"Simulation indicates laser on the Beretta may need recalibration," Alex notes on his tablet at two minutes to ten. He sips his tea (because the lab techs aren't idiots, and Q-the-first taught him, if nothing else, the value of compromise) and is about to set up the next sim when there's a massive _roar_and the basement shakes.

"What is that?" he asks. When neither of the lab techs answer (and, in fact, run out of the room), he stays in his chair (because if the building is on fire he can find a safer route with his computer than by stumbling around blindly) and pulls up the security cameras.

"Oh, dear," he says when they come up.

And then he runs.

* * *

By the time Alex makes it to their designated safe house – a warehouse with some desks, a small kitchen, and a cot in the corner - the only thing anyone from Q branch knows is that Q was trying to trace a hack with Smith and Carter in his office when the explosion hit. Neither Q nor Smith nor Carter are present at delta site, and Alex thinks _the bastard, he wouldn't ask me even though I taught Smith and Carter all they-_ and then _Oh,_because if Q had called him up from the labs he'd probably be dead.

Alex has perhaps twenty seconds for pontification before Price – Price, who pats Alex's shoulder because Alex reminds him of his kid brother – says "Sir," loudly enough that everyone's paying attention, then looks at Alex. "What's your plan of action?"

For all they know, M herself is dead, and no one's going to give them orders until someone thinks to appoint a new Q. Could be days, and the trail for the attacker – because surely it wasn't an accident – will only grow cold.

"Right," says Alex. He straightens his tie, realizes his fingers are shaking, and pulls a chair up to a computer before anyone can notice out loud. There are only a few computers at the safe house, with hardly any drives to speak of, but they'll have to do. He straightens his tie and gets to work. "Price, pull up the feed from right before the explosion. Ridley, sensors, please. Hill, I want everything you have on the signal they were tracking, the sooner the better, then get in touch with M if you can and one of the heads if you can't. Everyone else, find a laptop and secure it, then report back here. Thank you."

For himself, he leaves the work of figuring out what Q was working on before the attack. If S wants to sanction or fire him later, let him have at it; there's work to do, now.

* * *

M, it turns out, is not dead, though Q and Smith and Carter most definitely are. Tanner drops by the safe house eighteen hours after they start working. He brings food, a large tin of tea, and four armed guards, and he doesn't even pretend to look surprised when he sees Alex in charge.

"Call us when you find anything," he tells Alex with a hand on his shoulder, and Alex takes the time to notice, in between scrolling frame-by-frame through pixelated video feed and trying to eat a sandwich one-handed, that Tanner stresses the _when_ as if to point out that it's not _if_. The vote of confidence is nice, though he waves it off with a noncommittal grunt.

Tanner takes the hint and leaves.

* * *

A week after the explosion, M calls the safe house (into which Alex has more or less moved, since there's a working shower and tea kettle and a sandwich shop down the street and it's just easier to tell everyone what to do if they can always reach him) and asks Alex to come to her office at their new digs. A special project to do with the attack, he thinks. Monitoring the agent sent to kill the attacker, perhaps.

Tanner, whom Alex has spoken with perhaps once or twice since being recruited, not counting this week, shoots him an appraising glance and nods - Alex thinks, almost sympathetically - when Alex sits in front of M's desk.

M herself offers little sympathy.

"Congratulations," she tells him, looking not in the least bit congratulatory. "You've been promoted to Quartermaster."

Which is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

"Quartermaster," Alex says. This is the most ridiculous thing that's happened this week, and that includes no fewer than three of his coworkers - subordinates? - walking in on him wearing nothing more than a towel.

M blinks. "Quite. Your clearance is being upgraded - as if you need it - and you can speak to Hurst concerning specifications for the laboratory and your office; I expect you might want to take the chance to make a few upgrades. Your department will be briefed this afternoon, and I expect you to continue running operations from delta site until you're settled here."

Alex opened his mouth to speak, shut it and bit his lip, and pursed his lips at the rather hideous bulldog on M's desk.

It didn't give him any answers either.

"Why me?" He asked when M quirked an eyebrow at him.

M shrugged. "Why not? You were Perry's right-hand man, and you've been running most of the department since well before he died - and rather well, at that. Noting your de facto position as official would seem the thing to do."

She waits until he nods before she turns her attention back to the papers on her desk. "Tanner will see to your details."

She looks back up, and her gaze is piercing. "Good luck, Q."

Tanner hands Alex a card with his personal mobile number on it before Alex leaves.

"You'll need that," says Tanner. "I'll be in touch with you about your labs."

Q takes the card - though he's already memorized the number - and sticks it in his pocket. He wonders, as he walks out, what Perry felt like that December twenty-six months ago.

Q's not entirely sure what he feels like, himself.

* * *

One week into his tenure as head of the department, Q is far too tired to feel much of anything at all. He's had perhaps three square meals since M called him in, with occasional excursions to the snack machines by the cafeteria.

He has really been far too busy to distract himself with food, and only eats when he feels famished - and sleeps even less. Along with untangling the hack on MI-6, which he is still in charge, he now has to worry about the roughly thirty programmers, engineers, and technicians who are now sworn (quite literally, as he discovered when he joined the service) to obey his orders. It's not just giving them all assignments and keeping track of their work (and dear _God_, but where did the previous Qs ever find time to raise families in between reading reports?), he has to wrangle personal issues (which he expects will only increase once his subordinates' memories of the attack, and of Q as the pimply college kid who'd been at MI-6 several years less than the greenest of them, fade), facilitate inter-departmental communication, keep an eye on every active and inactive agent in the field, and personally outfit and monitor the Double Os.

Q quickly revises his opinion of the decision to promote him from 'totally ridiculous' to 'absolutely mad.'

He loves every minute of it.

A little past four o'clock in the morning on day four of his tenure he steals one of Ridley's Red Bulls from the fridge and spikes his tea.

It tastes so awful he nearly retches, but it gives him the kick he needs so he adds more and slinks back to his temporary office. He spends an hour doing paperwork - on his tablet, not on actual paper like a Luddite - before Tanner calls him.

"Answer call," Q says, because the evening of day one he put on a voice-activated earpiece and hasn't taken it off since. "Bill?"

"Q. M wants you to outfit 007. He needs to be in Shanghai tomorrow morning. Give him something nice."

"I'll have it done." Q types one-handed on his desktop. The Walter PPK he'd customized for Bond before Bond's - well, before Bond was presumed dead - was still in the labs, and in perfect working order. A cover identity for the flight shouldn't be difficult to work - he could do that himself in a couple of hours. Get his mind off the paperwork for a bit. "Where do I contact him?"

"National Gallery - where you were going to meet 005."

In front of the painting with the ship - well, and wouldn't that be apt for the agent who'd just come back from the dead.

"Got it. Four o'clock?" That would give him just enough time to make up the proper documents and forge a visa, and might just give him enough leeway to make another pot.

"I'll tell him. And-" Bill's breath caught. Q's fingers stilled over the keyboard.

"And?"

"How are you?" It is asked, not in the soft, sympathetic tone that one might take with a (frightened) child, but rather appraisingly, and matter of fact, as one might question a colleague given a task you thought he was under qualified for. The fact that Tanner's been one of the few who hasn't questioned Q's posting or his ability to lead rather takes the sting out of it, and its coldness is the only reason Q even stops to think before he snaps back a witty riposte.

He looks up from his computer screen - and it's to the point where even white text on black grates, and he sees lines and lines of code every time he shuts his eyes - and takes a breath. His office is empty, still, save for his desk and computer cold glass and metal staring back at him. There are agents scurrying out in the corridors, vague shapes through his polarized windows. Mounds of paperwork - actual paper, unavoidably - overwhelm his desk, and that's not even counting the desk he has down in the labs, which he doesn't even want to think about. There's too much work and not enough time do it in, and he's hungry and tired and doesn't know when he'll get a chance to take a breath in.

But it's not too much for him. Not yet. He'll organize, compartmentalize, and make sure the country's secrets don't fall open under his watch, because if he can't do it then no one else will.

"I'm fine," he says, finally, and he hears Bill let out a breath on the other end. "I'll manage."

"Good," Bill says, and there's warmth in it this time.

* * *

The meeting with 007 goes better than Q's expecting. There are jabs about his age, of course, but, at the risk of sounding like a child, Q starts it in the first place, and even when 007 jabs back it's all perfunctory.

"I'm your (new) quartermaster," Q says, and the words roll off his tongue like they've been waiting to get out.

He stays in his office until four that morning. Bill pokes his head in once or twice to bring him coffee until midnight, and a little past four in the morning Q wakes up to someone waking his shoulder.

"Come on," Bill says, dressed in a new suit and tie and - good Lord, how early does the man come in every day? - looking not a little amused at finding the head of the technical department drooling on a grant requisition. "I've ordered a car - he'll pick you up again in four.'

Q thinks of proper retorts and excuses, naturally: he has to finish the paperwork ("It will wait until the morning"), someone needs to keep an eye on Bond's transmitter (Price and Ridley can take it in shifts), there's the matter of the technicians report on- ("I'll make sure Hurst sees to that, sir, if that's all?"), and Q has more – he could go on for hours – but while he's busy enumerating his complaints, Bill bundles him into his anorak, takes a way his thermos, and manhandles him into the back of a sedan waiting in the parking garage, making sure to snap Q's seatbelt shut.

It is possible that Q is more tired than he expected.

"I don't," Q says, waiting to finish until he finishes yawning, "Need a nursemaid, Bill."

""No," Bill says, and he's got circles under his eyes too, and his mouth looks drawn even as its corners crinkle upward. "But you do need to learn how to delegate. Can't have you collapsing when Bond needs you, can we? I'll get M to make it an order if you need."

"Don't worry," he says as he steps away. "You can learn the art of politics after this crisis. I'll schedule you for a seminar."

The last thing Q sees before he falls asleep is Bill waving the car away. _He must have better things to do,_, he thinks, and then, _It doesn't sound right when he calls me 'sir'._

* * *

Three hours of sleep is not nearly enough after the week he's had, but it'll do. Q had worse his last year at uni, or so he tells himself, working two projects for M nights after working on his doctoral thesis days. He takes the time to brush his hair and dress neatly, because he looks young enough already without aggravating it and if nothing else he needs his subordinates' cooperation – and not just those who work primarily with code. It doesn't hurt he's always been particular – especially since Michael the theater makeup artist. Years ago, already, and Q wonders if he'll ever have a proper relationship again.

He'd settle for enough time to shag, now, though he's so tired he's not even sure he could manage.

The sedan is waiting outside his flat again. Q feels a little awkwardness at first, as he distinctly remembers not being able to remember getting out of the car or making it to his bed, which would indicate he had some help, but the chauffeur – a tall, dark haired woman with a soldier's bearing and a name tag reading 'Janelle' – merely nods, hands him a folder sealed with tape from the labs (most of last night's paperwork, neatly filled out and awaiting his initials) and makes a face severe enough to discourage him from asking any questions.

* * *

Q spends most of the morning trying to find and fix the weak spots the attacker used to hack into the mainframe. He drinks five cups of tea before he realizes that the vague buzzing in his head is probably hunger and stops by the cafeteria. He only stays long enough to grab a sandwich and some napkins. There are technicians eating breakfast in the lunchroom - he used to eat with them, on occasion, and so long as the conversation stayed on computers - and he usually managed to make sure it did - they took no notice of his age and treated him like a peer – he was Alex who had a good tip about the pipe darts, not Alex the kid with floppy hair.

He can't do that any more. He nods at them instead, dashing upstairs and nearly making it to his office before one of Bill's minions flags him down with a quick question about the office space.

"No cubicles," he'd said when they asked his specifications, and you'd thought he'd have told the staff he wanted to install a pot for cannibal stew. It takes him eight minutes to extricate himself from this latest inquisition, and he locks his office door behind himself.

He's just sat down and unwrapped his sandwich when Bond's radio transmitter turns on.

It triggers a box on Q's screen, a beeping alarm on the main computer in the laboratory, and automated phone calls to Q, Price, Ridley, and Bill - because if there's one thing Q's trawling through code has taught him, it's that one can never be too careful.

He calls Bill himself as soon as he has his earpiece back on, and Bill listens before hanging up to, presumably, contact a retrieval team.

Q monitors communication until retrieval confirm they've picked up Bond and an unnamed suspect on an island outside of China.

Once Q calls Bill back to confirm he has a secure cell waiting for their guest, Q turns back to his code.

He makes it home that evening after he has the brilliant idea of taking his paperwork home. Bond and the prisoner are a long flight away, anyway, and it's unlikely that anyone will attack MI-6 again – at least not for a few hours.

He lets himself have five hours of precious, precious sleep and wakes up feeling better than he has in weeks.

* * *

He's all out of clean suits the next morning, so he slips on a cardigan and silently thanks the universe for giving young computer geeks leeway in apparel and giving him a decent a sister who spoils him with clothing every Christmas.

He buys himself a doughnut and coffee before he gets on the tube. He's not quite rested enough to smile, and there's M's hearing that has to be dealt with (because the thought of having some jumped-up bureaucrat come in and take her place is as horrifying as it is unlikely to happen, as he sees it), but it's a close thing, and he finds himself rhythmically tapping his fingers on his hip when Hurst knocks on his office and tells him that Q would be proud.

He's rested, more or less, he's eaten breakfast on his own initiative, and he's got a shiny new computer full of information to hack into, and an appreciative audience (with fine blue eyes) to do it in front of. Even Bill's tight-drawn lips as they pass by each other in the hall can't bring him down, though he nods sympathetically.

The day is wonderful for all of twenty minutes. Then Q connects Silva's laptop to the mainframe, and it all goes to hell.

Bill wanders in a few minutes after Q starts tracking Bond's car.

"That them?" he asks, nodding at the screen.

Q nods back, then jerks his head at across the hall at the break room without taking his eyes off his screen. "There's beer in the fridge."

Bill snorts and mutters something under his breath about regulations, but takes one anyway before he joins Q at the desk.

Mallory, Q realizes with a burst of insight, some hours later, would probably be with them if he didn't have to deal with phone calls and bloviating prime ministers and having to keep up appearances before subordinates. He'd be right there with them keeping watch on the screen where Q's commandeered a satellite with thermal imaging.

It's a long, and mostly silent, vigil. He and Bill each have a beer while Bond's still driving, but they both know they're going to need to be alert as possible for what's coming, and Q brings his kettle from his office.

"You've worked with her long?" He asks a bit past midnight, because stress is well and good but he can still feel the exhaustion of another sleepless night starting to hit home, and even sitting cross-legged on the edge of a rather tall desk isn't enough to keep him alert.

"Six years." Bill takes a drink, but he doesn't take his eyes off the screen, and something of the brittle terseness his tone warns Q against any inane remarks about how six years is a long time.

M is not the sort of person that inspires lukewarm feelings, whatever end of the spectrum they lie on.

They lapse into silence, and don't speak again until several – ten, eleven – no, a full dozen – figures blip onto the edge of the screen.

Q calls Mallory, then, and tells him that it's started, and Mallory grabs his mobile and an empty glass that probably had scotch in it earlier and joins them.

They're waiting, still, to see who it was that died when Bond calls it in.

* * *

Bill goes pale and holds his empty bottle so tight around the neck his fingers turn white. Mallory curses, transfers the call to Q, and stalks out of the room.

"I'll send in an evac team," Q says as his fingers fly over the keyboard, and he doesn't even listen when Bond says he's all right. "They should be there in twenty."

Things, after that, seem to alternate between slow motion and fast forward so that it feels fuzzy when Q thinks about it later. He's at HQ for three days after that, dealing with the fallout. MPs worried about the state of security at MI-6, for starters, after an attack on an enquiry and the subsequent murder of its head; Mallory, telling him there will be questions asked about the matter so if Q could write a report concisely, please, explaining things; meetings with the other department heads to work things out until an interim director is appointed. Q takes catnaps in his office, showers in the labs, and has Janelle the chauffer break into his flat and bring him clothing and deodorant. He eats a grilled cheese sandwich, a banana, and a cup of soup and drinks ridiculous amounts of tea.

On the third afternoon, he's called into a meeting to explain how Silva managed to hack into their system.

"I made a mistake," he tells the assembled bureaucrats, who purse their lips and shake their heads sagely. There's a ringing in Q's ears, and when he gestures with his hand his fingers feel weightless. "I connected Silva's laptop to the system in order to more easily hack into it. I believed my system was sufficiently secured so-"

"Hmm," says one of the men. He scribbles something on a legal pad in front of him. "Yes. That will be all, Mr. Christopoulos. Thank you."

Q knows he's not going to lose his job, because Mallory nods his head approvingly as he walks out, and Q knows that Mallory is going to save it for him.

He doesn't deserve it; if it weren't for him and his idiocy, M would still be alive. But any of his subordinates would have done the same thing, and they wouldn't have been able to lay a trail good enough for Silva to follow to the Bond estate.

For all the good that did them.

Bill and Bond are sitting in the waiting room Q was in before they called him in. He nods at them as he walks in, and the effort brings back the buzzing in his head, and suddenly it's not just his fingers that feel weightless.

One sandwich, a banana, a cup of soup and a doughnut, coupled with a grand total of five hours of sleep over four days (not counting exhaustion from before), supplemented by kettles full of tea and energy drinks; not, perhaps, a winning combination.

"Huh," Q says. His tongue feels numb, and he can't seem to take another step. Bill and Bond both start to speak and move, but Q's not entirely sure if that's because they're standing or because the floor is wobbling. "Fuck."

He comes to flat on the floor with his legs propped up on a stool and 007's overcoat folded under his head.

"It could be worse," Bill says. "Least you didn't faint in the conference room."

They let him go home for a day or two, after that.

* * *

M's funeral is so well attended by politicians and the intelligence community at large that Q's rather surprised no one bombs it.

He wakes up at two o'clock the next morning to someone knocking on his door.

Q's not actually surprised to see Bill standing on the other side with a case of beer in his hands, but it is a bit unexpected when he leads Bill into the living room and finds Bond already sitting on his sofa.

"Sorry," Bond says, and for the first time since Q's met him, the man looks unsure. "Thought I'd drop in."

It's exactly the sort of awful line he'd have given M, but neither Q nor Bill want to say that, so they pull up a space on the couch – Bill and Bond at the edges – and pop open their beers.

"Was it your mother," Bond asks eventually, when the silence gets a bit too awkward, "Or your father who died, Q? Never did figure that out."

Because it's obvious that Bond did him the courtesy of not looking at his file, Q doesn't ask him how he knew, and he's just drunk enough that it affords an answer.

"My dad," he answers. "He was an airline pilot. Greek. Met Mum on a trip. Mum had a breakdown when I was eight. M recruited me after I hacked into the Chinese embassy and almost got assassinated."

"Ah," Bond says as if that explains something. "So that was _you _they were after. I always wondered."

Bill, on his other side, swills his beer and lets out a breath. "My parents are dead too. Raised by my Gran. M hired me when I was just out of uni."

Bond doesn't volunteer his tale of childhood woe, but, then, he doesn't have to. That one's obvious just by looking at him, and they've both read his file.

"Life's not fair," Bill says under his breath, and Q stares straight ahead and is trying to figure out what not to say back to the broken men beside him when his drink-fogged brain works and he thinks _Oh, so that's what Sarah meant_, and drinks his beer and says nothing at all instead.

"Mallory's keeping all of us." Bill drains his bottle and opens a new one. "We'll probably be dead before we're fifty."

Bond, for his part, mutters something that sounds suspiciously like "Wouldn't that be a relief," and leans his head back against the cushions.

Q falls asleep listening to them breathe.

The next morning, Bond is gone, Bill is sprawled on the lazy chair, and there's a new pack of beer, with a note in Bond's writing, in Q's fridge.

"He used to break into M's house, didn't he?" Q asks Bill when Bill stumbles into the kitchen, limbs stiff but eyes clearer than they've been in days.

Bill shrugs, rather guiltily, and won't meet Q's eyes until he leaves with a nod and a mumbled 'thanks, Alex'.

Q wonders how he'll explain _this one _to his sister next time she comes down and finds two strange men kipping in his living room.

Ah well, Q tells himself as he readies himself for another day at the office. They'll not bring it up at work; Bond is no doubt already prepping for his next mission, will drop in to pester Q Branch for some tacky equipment before he leaves, and Bill's probably filling in their new boss on the day's schedule.

It could be worse, Q thinks, and makes sure to grab a bagel on his way to the station.

At least Mallory's not the visiting type.


End file.
